In a process described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,883,333, continuous glass fiber strand mat is made on a forming conveyor and is fed to a mechanical needler which imparts mechanical integrity to the mat by rapidly penetrating the mat with barbed needles to thereby bond the glass strands. In the system shown in the above patent, two conveyors are employed, one on which mat is first formed and a second one which moves the mat through the needling machine. Occasionally, the mat being transferred from the forming chain to the needling machine falls between the main conveyor roll and the drive roll of the second conveyor which causes the mat to tear or become fouled on the conveyor roll on the second conveyor. If the fouling is particularly bad, this necessitates considerable downtime to move the needler drive roll so that the glass can be cut off of the main conveyor roll or the second conveyor rolls so that the process can be restarted. Further, considerable difficulty has been encountered in keeping the unbonded mat transferred from the main conveyor to the needler conveyor in a straight line and the mat material if it is fed into the needler in an off-center or non-straight mode causes excessive waste out of the needler due to the fact that most needled mat is edge trimmed to a precise width.
In an attempt to solve the problem of mat transfer, a system was proposed to utilize a grooved roll rather than a second conveyor to transfer mat to the needling device. The grooves in the roll were provided with fingers to lift the mat as it passed over the roll surface to assist in the transfer. This system failed in that glass strands tended to stick to the fingers and wrap around the needler feed roll causing more wraps than were experienced with the double conveyor belt system of the aforementioned patent.
Thus, a need still existed to provide an efficient method of transferring continuous strand mat from a forming conveyor to a bonding operation, such as a needling machine, which would minimize roll wraps at the transfer point and which would also provide a system that minimizes the downtime for the machinery should a roll wrap occur. There was also a need to provide system for conveying the mat from the mat forming conveyor to the bonding station in a straight path to minimize waste caused by misalignment.